Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Congress needs to get to the bottom of Obama-era harassment of non-profit groups.

In the bubble of Washington, pols strain at the gnat and swallow the camel. They chase after media-driven pseudo-scandals while letting real scandals linger.

Take the scandal of the IRS’s harassment of non-profit groups during the Obama administration. Getting to the bottom of that scandal is far more important than any of the election-related wild goose chases under discussion in the press. Americans don’t toss and turn at night over fears of a hazy network of Russian hackers. But they do fear letters from the IRS.

To their credit, a few conservative Republicans in the House still draw attention to the unresolved scandal at the IRS. “Frankly in my view the most corrupt IRS commissioner that I’ve ever dealt with continues in my view to mislead Congress,” according to Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. “And until he’s removed I don’t think the IRS will ever regain its credibility.” Brady is referring to the still-unsacked John Koskinen, the Obama-appointed IRS commissioner who stonewalled Republicans during the Lois Lerner investigation. Even the circumspect Mitch McConnell calls Koskinen a “disaster.” A letter sent by the House Republican Study Committee to President Trump explains why:

The IRS, through its targeting of citizens for their political beliefs, has forfeited the trust of a free people. The IRS has admitted to improperly targeting conservative groups, delaying applications for tax-exempt status from 2010-2012, with at least 75 groups selected for extra scrutiny. Moreover, in August 2016, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the IRS had yet to demonstrate that officials have definitively ceased targeting conservative groups. The ruling came at the heels of evidence that two targeted conservative groups continued to have delayed applications for tax-exempt status pending at the IRS.

Congressional investigations, hearings, and actions have shown that Commissioner Koskinen misled Congress, obstructed investigations into the IRS, and failed to comply with Congressional subpoenas. Commissioner Koskinen’s willful deception and obstructionism has only further eroded any remaining confidence.

Pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 7803, you have the authority to remove Commissioner Koskinen. We encourage you to dismiss him in the most expedient manner practicable. Such an action would restore the credibility of our Federal tax authority and the faith the American people have in their Constitutional rights to free speech and association.

Obama left office claiming that his administration had been “scandal-free,” a whopper blatantly refuted by the politicization of the IRS on his watch. If Congress fails to ventilate the IRS scandal sufficiently, Obama’s embeds at the IRS will continue to harass conservative groups. A lazy and biased media has pushed the propagandistic line that the scandal was overblown and is now ancient news. It isn’t.

As Pepperdine Law School professor Paul Caron notes, the “IRS scandal never ended, because the behavior never stopped.” Expect more harassment, he says: “the structural forces that nurtured it — piqued politicians demanding agencies ‘do something’ in accord with political objectives, and like-minded, eager-to-please career employees manning those agencies — means a repeat is not just predictable, it’s inevitable.”

According to Caron, “no IRS official ever suffered for the blatantly unconstitutional and unethical actions.” Even Lois Lerner, the nemesis of the Tea Party, escaped largely unscathed, with an enormous bonus and pension to boot. “She could receive almost $4 million over her lifetime,” he says.

The Obama administration openly bragged about how it would use government power to bankrupt and delegitimize its opponents. “I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said,” recalled Obama EPA administrator Al Armendariz in 2010. “It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

Obama’s embeds at the IRS harbor the same mindset. They thought that they could make an example out of Tea Party groups and strike fear in all conservative non-profits. When these officials got nabbed, they explained it away as “horrible customer service.” But the memorable cri de coeur of Becky Gerritson from Alabama’s Wetumpka Tea Party in 2013 — which foreshadowed the rise of Trumpian nationalism — got to the real issue, the left-wing tyranny that masquerades as “good government”:

In Wetumpka, we are patriotic Americans; we peacefully assemble; we petition our government; we exercise our right to free speech. We don’t understand why the government tried to stop us. I’m not here as a serf or a vassal. I’m not begging my lord for mercy. I’m a born-free American woman, wife, mother, and citizen, and I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place.

Under the framework of the founders, the people are masters, not servants, and the IRS holds no bondage on their freedoms. Congress must at long last investigate fully the IRS’s out-of-control investigators. Instead of wasting time on the fashions of the moment, Congress should deliver to the forgotten the protection that the Constitution promises them.

Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.

The Goals of Communism

(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.